by Dr. William L. Haig
Chairman,CEO Powerlogos Design
Co-author, The Power of Logos: How to Create
Effective Company Logos,
NY: Wiley, 1997 (fifth printing.)

Managing the Credible Brand Image Press Release - February 9, 2004

How do you stack up as a successful company manager by today’s standards and requirements?

In short, do you manage for success? Are you achieving?
It is all about your marketing mindset. In particular, your
mindset toward managing your company’s marketing communication
should be to establish a credible brand image.

This is not managing any brand image. This is about managing a credible brand image so your customers will better accept your messages to move them to achieve your company goals – sales for example.

This is what you need to ask yourself in today’s competitive marketplace where product and services differences are made by you.

Do you have a clear-cut understanding
about the persuasion value of your Credibility Based Logo?

You do if you understand that the only value of a logo communicating
with credibility. It says you are an “expert”
in what you do by symbolizing the company business. Historically,
Joe the key maker used a key symbol in his shop sign. This
says Joe is an “expert” at key making. Same
thing with all logos. Except now, AT&T, the communication
company, must symbolize “communication” and
look “trustworthy” or “believable”
by looking high tech. This is easily done with a contemporary
style in the logo design.

Logos are credible if they symbolize what the company does.
This is its “expertise” in a design form. It
also looks “trustworthy”. These are the two
major prongs of being credible. We call this Credibility
Based Logo Design™. It has proven over and over
to achieve company goals. Just like credible people move
us as sports announcers or news anchors.

Do you create demand for your products/services
with a credible brand image, or do you cost-cut?

Surprise! You can be doing both. That is what Credibility
Based Logo Design™ is all about. Logos are the
cornerstone for your branding efforts. Logos create the
brand image in application. Credible logos create demand
by supporting what the company says. Adopt a credible logo
then apply it throughout all customer touch points such
as your letterhead, envelope, business card, vehicle identification,
signage, advertising – everywhere. This is a powerful
marketing communication system. It works with management
attention to consistency and coordination with attention
to logo placement on these elements. Managers create demand
and cost-cut.

Do you nurture employees to build
company substance?

Company have to be what they say they are in marketing communication.
Particularly in a Credibility Based Logo Design™.
Companies have to live up to the promise. This is nurturing
employees to make the company function as it is suppose
to function.

Managers find that a company brand image works two ways.
It sets the management outward expectation. And it sets
the outward expectation management wants from employee work
habits. Notice how this works in a fine restaurant. The
wait-help get “caught up” in the total mood
of this high end dining experience. Or walk into a Tiffany
then a K-Mart.

The employees in each level of store give a different customer
experience. In fact, the brand image as expressed in marketing
communication such as advertising, logos and direct mail
is high end/low end too. Not wrong. Just different positioning
requiring a different credibility based brand image –
from employees to marketing communication.

Managing the company credibility based brand image and employees
to fulfill the brand expectation are essential to bringing
strategic vision and direction to the workplace. This is
in pulling the entire organization, internal and external,
together to influence customers based on the philosophy
that the company must be judged as credible in order to
succeed.

This is not difficult to do, just a determined attitude.
Just follow the example of the great ones such as Frank
Stanton of CBS; Thomas Watson, Jr. of IBM; Hans and Florence
Knoll of Knoll Furniture; Walter Paepeke of Container Corporation
of America; D. C. Burnham of Westinghouse; Steven Jobs of
Apple; and Peter McColough of Xerox.

They all understood the value a powerful and credible brand
image based on an equally powerful Credibility Based
Logo Design consistently projected in all touch points.
The success of their respective companies under their tenures
backs up this highly important attitude toward managing
their marketing communications and employees.

This is an original work of the author. All rights reserved. Copyright registration will be applied for. No part of this article may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, and recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author.